This weekend I'm participating in a Dharma Dialog on love and anger. I'm also participating in teaching a monthly workshop on White Work on Racism.
And I also strive to stay alive by eating and walking and washing the dishes. Why does washing the dishes come up so often in Buddhist conversations? I've written about it before, in some semi state of semi enlightenment, one of those recurrent episodes when I think I really Have It. I did have It of course, never lost it, blah blah, but nowadays washing dishes is brutal because I can't really stand without holding on to something and ya need both arms to do wishes. Nowadays whenever I do dishes I think of a dear ex-lover of mine with a serious obsessive compulsive problem who would spend an hour washing, then tell me that he was finished; all I had to do was rinse. I think of it when I'm done soaping and I wish there was someone I could turn to and say "I'm done."
"I'm almost done," I said to another dear former lover recently. I might be. I've written half of my part of the conversation, and I met with my collaborators on White Work, and I am spent, well spent. One of these activities would have been enough for the week. I claimed I would take the back seat but there in the back seat I kept yelping my opinion. I thought a little convo about love and anger would be no big deal. After all, I've considered these things professionally and personally for decades and decades and decades.
I do love repeating things thrice. love...
It was a big deal. Preparation was a big deal. Collaboration is not easy, and I'm not done. I'm tired and I'm not done. One thing makes another harder. I wanted to end with a poem in call and response, didn't like the sound of my voice on the last line, so my partner suggested I hold up a sign. Good idea! Then I remembered I can't write. Oh well.
...love
April 23, 2021
Elena Taurke